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Ed’s Caucus, Part 2

{Reminder: FILE A PETITION TO INTERVENE ON THE PIPELINE!! You have until July 27 to get the full volume of your voice heard in Iowa Utilities Board deliberations on the proposed Bakken Oil Pipeline. Click here for a copy of the petition.}

Different people have different approaches to how they involve themselves in the Iowa Caucuses. Me, I divide the year-long event into three parts.

Part 1: Encourage a slew of candidates to run. This usually isn’t much of a problem. Between the politically well-positioned (e.g., Governors and Senators) and the delusionally-wealthy who think they are politically well-positioned (e.g, Carson, Trump), there are no shortage of candidates eager to throw their recently-purchased seed corn hat into the ring.

On the Democratic side, this year threatened to be different. With the Democratic Party favoring coronations over nominations, the Democratic Caucus was shaping up to be a Soviet-style, one-candidate race, with Hillary Clinton squaring off against “None of the Above.”

Part 2: Decide which candidate to support. Like most caucus goers, I’ve got a whole list of issues I want my candidate to be “good” on (and face it, when we say “good” we mean “agrees with me”). I don’t always have a litmus test, but this year I do.

And not a single candidate has yet to demonstrate they’re “good” on that litmus test:

The Bakken Oil Pipeline.

From a climate point of view . . . from a water quality point of view . . . for those concerned about Big Business abusing the power of Big Government to confiscate someone’s land through eminent domain . . . the Bakken Oil Pipeline is an issue many of us are strongly against.

We have a right to know where the candidates stand on it, and more broadly on the issue of expanding the fossil-fuel infrastructure across the country with pipelines, fracking and mountain-top removal.

So far, to my knowledge, not a single presidential candidate has come forth with a position on this.

Let’s make the pipeline an issue in the Caucuses. Republican candidates who say they support property rights should be against it. Democrats who say they understand climate change should be against it. Any candidate who says they care about the people or the little guy or the land or the future or our children should be against it.

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